As many as 18 Lok Sabha MPs across political parties have demanded health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad's intervention to bar the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) from promoting 150 assistant professors. According to an AIIMS panel, these incumbents were appointed illegally.

As many as 18 Lok Sabha MPs across political parties have demanded health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad's intervention to bar the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) from promoting 150 assistant professors. According to an AIIMS panel, these incumbents were appointed illegally.

The premier medical institute was scheduled to hold the promotions on Wednesday, but the process has been slated for Thursday now.

Slamming the institute administration, Congress MP Jyoti Mirdha, who is a doctor by profession, has accused the AIIMS of flouting rules and contradicting its own stand in awarding promotions to faculty it accepted were appointed illegally.

Mirdha's views are particularly significant since she is a Parliamant representative on the AIIMS Institute Body, the highest decision-making body of the medical school.

In her letters to Azad and to law minister M Veerappa Moily, Mirdha has also accused the AIIMS of violating the rights of

"These appointments were totally arbitrary. No standard selection criterion was followed, merit was ignored and the constitutional provision of reservation for SC, ST and OBC candidates was completely bypassed," Mirdha said.

Moily has also written to Azad, expressing concern over the proposed promotions.

In a separate representation to Azad, 17 MPs, including former prime minister HD Deve Gowda, have sought the minister's intervention.

AIIMS officials said they did not wish to speak because the case is being heard in the high court. The ad hoc appointments were made between 1995 and 2003. Despite the Delhi HC rejecting the appeal of these teachers for regularisation, AIIMS awarded them permanent posts through a process Mirdha has dubbed a "sham". A panel set up under former Lok Sabha MP Karan Singh Yadav held the appointments illegal.